Positivity of certain functions associated with analysis on elliptic surfaces

In this paper, we study functions of one variable that are called boundary terms of two-dimensional zeta integrals established in recent works of Ivan Fesenko?s two-dimensional adelic analysis attached to arithmetic elliptic surfaces. It is known that the positivity of the fourth log derivatives of boundary terms around the origin is a sufficient condition for the Riemann hypothesis of Hasse-Weil L-functions of elliptic curves. We show that such positivity is also a necessary condition under some reasonable technical assumptions.     

Towards an ‘average’ version of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture

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The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture states that the rank of the Mordell-Weil group of an elliptic curve E equals the order of vanishing at the central point of the associated L-function L(s,E). Previous investigations have focused on bounding how far we must go above the central point to be assured of finding a zero, bounding the rank of a fixed curve or on bounding the average rank in a family. Mestre (1986) [Mes] showed the first zero occurs by , where NE is the conductor of E, though we expect the correct scale to study the zeros near the central point is the significantly smaller . We significantly improve on Mestre's result by averaging over a one-parameter family of elliptic curves E over Q(T). We assume GRH, Tate's conjecture if E is not a rational surface, and either the ABC or the Square-Free Sieve Conjecture if the discriminant has an irreducible polynomial factor of degree at least 4. We find non-trivial upper and lower bounds for the average number of normalized zeros in intervals on the order of (which is the expected scale). Our results may be interpreted as providing further evidence in support of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, as well as the Katz-Sarnak density conjecture from random matrix theory (as the number of zeros predicted by random matrix theory lies between our upper and lower bounds). These methods may be applied to additional families of L-functions.

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For a video summary of this paper, please click here or visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EVYPNi_LG0.     

A note on the Mordell-Weil rank modulo n

Conjecturally, the parity of the Mordell-Weil rank of an elliptic curve over a number field K is determined by its root number. The root number is a product of local root numbers, so the rank modulo 2 is (conjecturally) the sum over all places of K of a function of elliptic curves over local fields. This note shows that there can be no analogue for the rank modulo 3, 4 or 5, or for the rank itself. In fact, standard conjectures for elliptic curves imply that there is no analogue modulo n for any n>2, so this is purely a parity phenomenon.     

Root numbers and ranks in positive characteristic

For a global field K and an elliptic curve E_η over K(T), Silverman's specialization theorem implies rank(E_η(K(T)))?rank(E_t(K)) for all but finitely many t∈P¹(K). If this inequality is strict for all but finitely many t, the elliptic curve E_η is said to have elevated rank. All known examples of elevated rank for K=Q rest on the parity conjecture for elliptic curves over Q, and the examples are all isotrivial.Some additional standard conjectures over Q imply that there does not exist a non-isotrivial elliptic curve over Q(T) with elevated rank. In positive characteristic, an analogue of one of these additional conjectures is false. Inspired by this, for the rational function field K=κ(u) over any finite field κ with characteristic ≠2, we construct an explicit 2-parameter family E_c,d of non-isotrivial elliptic curves over K(T) (depending on arbitrary c,d∈κ^×) such that, under the parity conjecture, each E_c,d has elevated rank.     

Effective equidistribution and the Sato-Tate law for families of elliptic curves

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Extending recent work of others, we provide effective bounds on the family of all elliptic curves and one-parameter families of elliptic curves modulo p (for p prime tending to infinity) obeying the Sato-Tate law. We present two methods of proof. Both use the framework of Murty and Sinha (2009) [MS]; the first involves only knowledge of the moments of the Fourier coefficients of the L-functions and combinatorics, and saves a logarithm, while the second requires a Sato-Tate law. Our purpose is to illustrate how the caliber of the result depends on the error terms of the inputs and what combinatorics must be done.

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Constructing one-parameter families of elliptic curves with moderate rank

We give several new constructions for moderate rank elliptic curves over Q(T). In particular we construct infinitely many rational elliptic surfaces (not in Weierstrass form) of rank 6 over Q using polynomials of degree two in T. While our method generates linearly independent points, we are able to show the rank is exactly 6 without having to verify the points are independent. The method generalizes; however, the higher rank surfaces are not rational, and we need to check that the constructed points are linearly independent.     

Low-lying zeros of families of elliptic curves

There is a growing body of work giving strong evidence that zeros of families of -functions follow distribution laws of eigenvalues of random matrices. This philosophy is known as the random matrix model or the Katz-Sarnak philosophy. The random matrix model makes predictions for the average distribution of zeros near the central point for families of -functions. We study these low-lying zeros for families of elliptic curve -functions. For these -functions there is special arithmetic interest in any zeros at the central point (by the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer and the impressive partial results towards resolving the conjecture).

We calculate the density of the low-lying zeros for various families of elliptic curves. Our main foci are the family of all elliptic curves and a large family with positive rank. An important challenge has been to obtain results with test functions that are concentrated close to the origin since the central point is a location of great arithmetical interest. An application of our results is an improvement on the upper bound of the average rank of the family of all elliptic curves (conditional on the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis (GRH)). The upper bound obtained is less than , which shows that a positive proportion of curves in the family have algebraic rank equal to analytic rank and finite Tate-Shafarevich group. We show that there is an extra contribution to the density of the low-lying zeros from the family with positive rank (presumably from the ``extra" zero at the central point).

     

Distribution of Selmer groups of quadratic twists of a family of elliptic curves

We study the distribution of the size of the Selmer groups arising from a 2-isogeny and its dual 2-isogeny for quadratic twists of elliptic curves with full 2-torsion points in Q. We show that one of these Selmer groups is almost always bounded, while the 2-rank of the other follows a Gaussian distribution. This provides us with a small Tate-Shafarevich group and a large Tate-Shafarevich group. When combined with a result obtained by Yu [G. Yu, On the quadratic twists of a family of elliptic curves, Mathematika 52 (1-2) (2005) 139-154 (2006)], this shows that the mean value of the 2-rank of the large Tate-Shafarevich group for square-free positive integers n less than X is , as X→∞.     

An arithmetic formula for certain coefficients of the Euler product of Hecke polynomials

In 1997 the author found a criterion for the Riemann hypothesis for the Riemann zeta function, involving the nonnegativity of certain coefficients associated with the Riemann zeta function. In 1999 Bombieri and Lagarias obtained an arithmetic formula for these coefficients using the “explicit formula” of prime number theory. In this paper, the author obtains an arithmetic formula for corresponding coefficients associated with the Euler product of Hecke polynomials, which is essentially a product of L-functions attached to weight 2 cusp forms (both newforms and oldforms) over Hecke congruence subgroups Γ₀(N). The nonnegativity of these coefficients gives a criterion for the Riemann hypothesis for all these L-functions at once.     

A unitary test of the Ratios Conjecture

The Ratios Conjecture of Conrey, Farmer and Zirnbauer (2008) [CFZ1], (preprint) [CFZ2] predicts the answers to numerous questions in number theory, ranging from n-level densities and correlations to mollifiers to moments and vanishing at the central point. The conjecture gives a recipe to generate these answers, which are believed to be correct up to square-root cancelation. These predictions have been verified, for suitably restricted test functions, for the 1-level density of orthogonal (Huynh and Miller (preprint) [HuyMil], Miller (2009) [Mil5], Miller and Montague (in press) [MilMo]) and symplectic (Miller (2008) [Mil3], Stopple (2009) [St]) families of L-functions. In this paper we verify the conjecture's predictions for the unitary family of all Dirichlet L-functions with prime conductor; we show square-root agreement between prediction and number theory if the support of the Fourier transform of the test function is in (−1,1), and for support up to (−2,2) we show agreement up to a power savings in the family's cardinality.     

Potential modularity for elliptic curves and some applications

In this paper we prove the simultaneous potential modularity for a finite number of elliptic curves defined over a totally real field. As an application we prove the meromorphic continuation of some L-functions associated to elliptic curves and Tate conjecture for a product of 2 or 4 elliptic curves defined over a totally real field.     

Lower order terms for the one-level density of elliptic curve L-functions

It is believed that, in the limit as the conductor tends to infinity, correlations between the zeros of elliptic curve L-functions averaged within families follow the distribution laws of the eigenvalues of random matrices drawn from the orthogonal group. For test functions with restricted support, this is known to be the true for the one- and two-level densities of zeros within the families studied to date. However, for finite conductor Miller's experimental data reveal an interesting discrepancy from these limiting results. Here we use the L-functions ratios conjectures to calculate the 1-level density for the family of even quadratic twists of an elliptic curve L-function for large but finite conductor. This gives a formula for the leading and lower order terms up to an error term that is conjectured to be significantly smaller. The lower order terms explain many of the features of the zero statistics for relatively small conductor and model the very slow convergence to the infinite conductor limit. However, our main observation is that they do not capture the behaviour of zeros in the important region very close to the critical point and so do not explain Miller's discrepancy. This therefore implies that a more accurate model for statistics near to this point needs to be developed.     

Torsion bounds for elliptic curves and Drinfeld modules

We derive upper bounds on the number of L-rational torsion points on a given elliptic curve or Drinfeld module defined over a finitely generated field K, as a function of the degree [L:K]. Our main tool is the adelic openness of the image of Galois representations, due to Serre, Pink and Rütsche. Our approach is to prove a general result for certain Galois modules, which applies simultaneously to elliptic curves and to Drinfeld modules.     

Complete classification of torsion of elliptic curves over quadratic cyclotomic fields

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In a previous paper Najman (in press) [9], the author examined the possible torsions of an elliptic curve over the quadratic fields Q(i) and . Although all the possible torsions were found if the elliptic curve has rational coefficients, we were unable to eliminate some possibilities for the torsion if the elliptic curve has coefficients that are not rational. In this note, by finding all the points of two hyperelliptic curves over Q(i) and , we solve this problem completely and thus obtain a classification of all possible torsions of elliptic curves over Q(i) and .

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For a video summary of this paper, please click here or visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPhCkJTGB_o.     

Newton stratification for polynomials: The open stratum

In this paper we consider the Newton polygons of L-functions coming from additive exponential sums associated to a polynomial over a finite field Fq. These polygons define a stratification of the space of polynomials of fixed degree. We determine the open stratum: we give the generic Newton polygon for polynomials of degree d?2 when the characteristic p?3d, and the Hasse polynomial over Fp, i.e. the equation defining the hypersurface complementary to the open stratum.     

Finding rational points on bielliptic genus 2 curves

We discuss a technique for trying to find all rational points on curves of the form Y ²=f ₃ X ⁶+f ₂ X ⁴+f ₁ X ²+f ₀, where the sextic has nonzero discriminant. This is a bielliptic curve of genus 2. When the rank of the Jacobian is 0 or 1, Chabauty's Theorem may be applied. However, we shall concentrate on the situation when the rank is at least 2. In this case, we shall derive an associated family of elliptic curves, defined over a number field ℚα. If each of these elliptic curves has rank less than the degree of ℚα : ℚ, then we shall describe a Chabauty-like technique which may be applied to try to find all the points (x,y) defined over ℚα) on the elliptic curves, for which x∈ℚ. This in turn allows us to find all ℚ-rational points on the original genus 2 curve. We apply this to give a solution to a problem of Diophantus (where the sextic in X is irreducible over ℚ), which simplifies the recent solution of Wetherell. We also present two examples where the sextic in X is reducible over ℚ. Received: 27 November 1998 / Revised version: 4 June 1999     

Fully maximal and fully minimal abelian varieties

We introduce and study a new way to categorize supersingular abelian varieties defined over a finite field by classifying them as fully maximal, mixed or fully minimal. The type of A depends on the normalized Weil numbers of A and its twists. We analyze these types for supersingular abelian varieties and curves under conditions on the automorphism group. In particular, we present a complete analysis of these properties for supersingular elliptic curves and supersingular abelian surfaces in arbitrary characteristic, and for a one-dimensional family of supersingular curves of genus 3 in characteristic 2.     

Determining L-functions by twists

Suppose that L₁(s) and L₂(s) are two L-functions whose twists by a set of Dirichlet characters simultaneously vanish (vanish mod p) at a critical point. We examine the extent to which this property determines the L-functions in the cases of L-functions of elliptic curves, of number fields, and of curves over finite fields.     

Explicit Heegner points: Kolyvagin's conjecture and non-trivial elements in the Shafarevich-Tate group

Kolyvagin used Heegner points to associate a system of cohomology classes to an elliptic curve over Q and conjectured that the system contains a non-trivial class. His conjecture has profound implications on the structure of Selmer groups. We provide new computational and theoretical evidence for Kolyvagin's conjecture. More precisely, we explicitly approximate Heegner points over ring class fields and use these points to give evidence for the conjecture for specific elliptic curves of rank two. We explain how Kolyvagin's conjecture implies that if the analytic rank of an elliptic curve is at least two then the Zp-corank of the corresponding Selmer group is at least two as well. We also use explicitly computed Heegner points to produce non-trivial classes in the Shafarevich-Tate group.     

Exhibiting SHA[2] on hyperelliptic Jacobians

We discuss approaches to computing in the Shafarevich-Tate group of Jacobians of higher genus curves, with an emphasis on the theory and practice of visualisation. Especially for hyperelliptic curves, this often enables the computation of ranks of Jacobians, even when the 2-Selmer bound does not bound the rank sharply. This was previously only possible for a few special cases. For curves of genus 2, we also demonstrate a connection with degree 4 del Pezzo surfaces, and show how the Brauer-Manin obstruction on these surfaces can be used to compute members of the Shafarevich-Tate group of Jacobians. We derive an explicit parametrised infinite family of genus 2 curves whose Jacobians have nontrivial members of the Shafarevich-Tate group. Finally, we prove that under certain conditions, the visualisation dimension for order 2 cocycles of Jacobians of certain genus 2 curves is 4 rather than the general bound of 32.